I've come to percieve a certain flaw in the way we program bots at the moment: bot behavior is generally too simple. Most bots' behavior comes straight from a series of if ... then triggers, directly from the dna; bots ignore others of their own species, and spend all their time eating (or searching for something to eat) and replicating. We're programing more and more efficient grey goo.
The purpose of these new challenges is to encourage the development of more
interesting,
interactive and
intelligent bot behavior. The new challenges are more informal too and less competitive, with much looser rules and goals. Discussion and sharing of ideas is also encouraged.
This will also have consequences for the DB environment. Terrirorial bots will diversify the field; bots that can learn can utilise nontrivial strategies; bots with behavior controled by meta-systems (ie. non-genetically-deterministic behavior) might evolve in different ways ...
The first of the new challenges is to program a bot with a very basic artificial neural net to govern behavior. To attempt this you need to know a bit about neural networks, so it's a pretty high target. Massive kudos to whoever attempts this.